A study led by the Nutrition, Eumetabolism and Health group of the Josep Trueta Biomedical Research Institute of Girona (IDIBGI) and the CIBEROBN, describes a relationship between intestinal microbiota, iron deposits in the blood and cognition, and have identified some species bacteria present in the intestinal microbiota that are negatively related to both blood ferritin levels and also the executive function of the brain.
The article, published in the scientific journal Gut Microbes, finds that blood levels of ferritin, a protein involved in iron storage, are positively linked to the executive function of the brain, responsible for skills such as planning, inhibition , flexibility, verbal fluency and memory, all of them with great impact on our daily living activities.
The association has been identified in a large sample of more than a thousand people, data collected in the IDIBGI Aging Imageoma project. The findings represent new clues about how diet and gut microbiota can influence mental health.
At the molecular level, the research team has also found specific metabolic pathways that seem to influence this relationship between iron and cognition. “This new association leads us to think that the intestinal microbiota could modulate the effects of iron on cognition. We will have to investigate if this is the case,” says Jordi Mayneris-Perxachs, researcher at IDIBGI and CIBEROBN, who led this publication.
“We are increasingly finding evidence of the gut microbiota-brain axis. If we can understand this link, it could open the door to creating therapies for cognitive disorders based on the modification of the microbiota through changes in diet,” explains José Manuel Fernández. Real, leader of the same research group and, at the same time, head of the Endocrinology Section of the Trueta Hospital in Girona.
Researchers from the FISABIO – CIBERESP Foundation and the Lleida Biomedical Research Institute (IRBLleida) have also collaborated in the study. The first author of the article is Marisel Rosell-Díaz, a predoctoral researcher from the same group that is part of the European SmartAge project (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)-Innovative Training Networks (ITN), funded by the Horizon 2020 program.